Reverend Samuel Parris Of Salem Village example essay topic

CHRONOLOGY 1689 Samuel Parris arrives in Salem Village and is ordained as minister of the newly formed Salem Church. 1692 January Young girls in Parris's household begin acting strangely. February Parris's servants bake witch cake to heal girls. Other girls in community become involved, and first charges of witchcraft are made. Aggressive interrogations begin.

March Three women are sent to prison and others are charged. Afflictions prompt day of prayer. Reverend Deodat Lawson and Parris deliver sermons that stir up the populace. Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, and Sarah Good's four-year-old daughter are examined and sent to prison.

April John and Elizabeth Proctor, Giles Corey, and George Burroughs are among the twenty-three more people jailed. May Governor William Phips appoints panel of judges to hear cases as arrests mount. June Bridget Bishop is the first one hanged. A group of ministers in Boston convey their alarm to the governor.

Five more persons are sentenced to death. July Rebecca Nurse is among those hanged on Gallows Hill. August John Proctor is among those brought to trial and executed. September Giles Corey is pressed to death and Martha, his wife is among the last people, a group of eight, hanged.

October The governor forbids any more arrests and dissolves the witchcraft court, but another is appointed and some trials go on. 1693 May The governor orders the release of all accused witches upon payment of their fees. 1697 January Fast Day is held in Massachusetts in penance for witch trials. Judge Samuel Sewall apologizes. Jurors apologize.

1706 Ann Putnam, the younger, apologizes. 1711 Disgrace is officially removed from those accused, and compensation is ordered. CHARACTERS Those Executed: June 10, 1692 Bridget Bishop July 19, 1692 Sarah Good, Sarah Wildes, Elizabeth How, Susanna Martin, Rebecca Nurse August 19, 1692 George Burroughs, John Proctor, George Jacobs, John Willard, Martha Carrier September 19, 1692 Giles Corey September 22, 1692 Martha Corey, Mary Esty, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Margaret Scott, Wilmot Reed, Samuel War well, Mary Parker Panel of Judges: William Stoughton, Chief Justice Samuel Sewall, John Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin, Bartholomew Sergeant Chief Accusers: Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam and her daughter, also named Anna, Mercy Lewis, Thomas Putnam, Mary Walcott, Mary Aren, Elizabeth Hubbard, Tituba and John Indian Other Supporters of the Proceedings: The Reverends Samuel Parris, Deodat Lawson, John Hale, and Cotton Mather Chief Critics of the Proceedings: Tomas Brattle, Francis Nurse, Robert C alef, and the Reverends crease Mather and Samuel Willard The historical events on which Arthur Miller based his play "The Crucible" were some of the most shameful in the American history, leaving twenty innocent people executed and dumped without ceremony in mass graves on Gallows Hill. Also two hundred imprisoned, one a little girl was chained to the wall.

Most of them were subjected to the most intrusive indignities on their bodies and stripped of their earthly belongings, and their reputations. The horror of the events between June 10 and September 22 of 1692 is that they were perpetrated by religious men, among the most prominent ministers of their time, and that those holy men who were aware of how abominable the proceedings were did little to courageously and effectively call a halt to the suffering until the public as a whole had withdrawn support of the witch trials. Furthermore, this injustice was, done in the name of the Lord for religious reasons: God had visited punishment after punishment on New England for its sins. Satan was working overtime convert souls to his allegiance before the coming millennium; and, to prevent further disasters, the people needed to bring all their strength to the task of ridding their community of those who had signed contracts with the Devil. This was the openly declared reason, for cour aging members of the community to turn against each other hysterically. The murder, torture, and thievery that resulted can only be described as community insanity.

There were ugly, hidden reasons for the trials that were later seen to have more validity than the need, claimed by the New England leaders who urged on the hunt, for some kind of religious purgation. In February 1692, the Reverend Samuel Parris of Salem Village, north of Boston, became alarmed at the condition of his eleven-year-old daughter Elizabeth and his twelve-year-old niece Abigail Williams, who was living in the house with Parris's family. Both girls, but especially Elizabeth, began to be subject to some strange nervous disorders. Parris and a physician he consulted began to suspect that witchcraft was involved. Discovering that the girls had spent time with Parris's servant from Barbados and played games with palm readings and similar activities, Parris and his friends were convinced that witchcraft was involved. The witchcraft diagnosis was lent credence by cases in nearby Boston made public by the leading scholar and minister of the colony, the Reverend Cotton Mather.

When Parris's servants Tituba and her husband heard of the rumor, they tried to make matters better by making a "witch cake" of the girls' urine to cure them. This made things even worst when Parris and Thomas Putnam heard of it because it made them believe them that Satan was on the move in Salem. The two girls, joined by several others who were their companions in all this, began to divert attention from their own forbidden activities by claiming that various women in the village were witches and had caused their sickness. The witch hysteria was under way. Before the winter had ended, the girls, joined by others of their playmates and, most prominently, one young matron named Ann Putnam, had begun to accuse others of bewitching them: Tituba, the household servant, Sarah Good, a cantankerous and destitute old woman whom we might describe today as a mentally unstable bag lady, and Sarah Osborne, an eccentric who had displeased the church by failing to attend services and by living with a man before marrying him. On February 29, 1692, the sheriff served the first warrants for the three women to appear before magistrates John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, who in a completely extra legal fashion heard testimony and imprisoned the women.

The arrest of Tituba and the two Sarah was only the beginning. The ailments of the "bewitched" girls were on the center of attention as did their accusations. Tituba under fear of death or torture, confessed her own guilt and implicated others. In the intense spotlight, the young girls and Ann Putnam, senior, who continued as the prime movers in this frenzied episode, would claim to have been bitten or burned or in some other way attacked by whoever was accused and would almost in unison begin screaming, rolling their eyes, and babbling whenever they saw an accused person. Eventually, the accusations by the girls were reinforced by the testimony of others who claimed suddenly to have seen the accused fly through the air or to have had his or her "spectre" or spirit lie on top of them like a demon. Suddenly all of New England, but especially Salem, was in a state of satanic siege.

Witches appeared behind every bush; accusations followed every faltering step, dead cow, or failed crop. In the hysteria that ensued, charges and arrests multiplied, each one inflaming the situation further. More than a month after the young girls were first found to be afflicted, on March 1, 1692, the Reverend Parris held a day of prayer to combat the evil, and another minister, Parris's friend Deodat Lawson, came to town to add his support. One of the women in Salem, Martha Corey, had criticized the officials and ridiculed the witch-hunt from the first. On March 21, she was thrown into jail on charges of witchcraft.

Her eighty-year-old husband Giles had actually supported the officials until his wife was arrested. When this old man objected, he was also arrested. At this point, anything that could not be explained was presumed to be caused by witchcraft the illnesses of people or animals and even deaths that had happened years before. Little Dorcas, Sarah Good's four-year-old daughter, was arrested for witchcraft on March 23. For nine months she lay in shackles in prison. On March 24, Rebecca Nurse, long and widely known as a sister of charity in the community, was arrested on charges of witchcraft.

Her two sisters were also arrested when they came to their sister's defense. John Hathorne arrogantly presided over the illegal trials, entrapping, threatening, and terrifying those accused and assuniing that anyone accused was then automatically guilty. No evidence other than accusations was deemed necessary. Those accused of witchcraft would, in the terror of the moment and at the urging of loved ones, confess and name other "witches" in order to escape the hangman. Those newly accused would be arrested, and the cycle would continue. The Salem and Boston jails were full of those accused by April 1, but on April 21 an arrest occurred that rocked the area clergy, that of the Reverend George Burroughs of Maine, a man of almost superhuman physical strength.

By this time a few people, including two Boston ministers, Samuel Willard and Increase Mather, Cotton Mather's father, had begun to work quietly to bring the situation under control and to insist that the panel of judges and a jury be lawfully constituted. In response, the newly appointed royal governor, William Phips, as one of his first official acts, established such a council on May 29. On the first day of court, Bridget Bishop was found guilty. Some of the evidence against her, typical of all the testimony, seemed to be a vicious interpretation placed upon natural events, as, for example, when John Bly testified that he had had a disagreement with Bishop over a payment he owed her for a hog he had bought from her. Other evidence against her was "spectral", as when John Louder, who had also had a quarrel with Bishop, testified that he had seen her "likeness" sitting on his stomach. On June 10, Bridget Bishop was the first to be hanged.

On June 15, a group of citizens from the Boston area, including businessman Thomas Brattle and ministers Increase Mather and Samuel Willard, conveyed their alarm about the conduct of the trials to Governor Phips. What alarmed them as much as anything else was what the court accepted as evidence. Two kinds of "evidence" assumed great importance in these trials. One was the presence on the body of what the examiner called "a witch's teat". Often a mole, a wart, an old scar, or a fold of skin would be reported to the court as a witch's teat clear proof that the defendant was a witch.

In addition, the court readily admitted what was called spectral evidence. It was well known, of course, that witches could be in several places at the same time, that one's neighbor, for example, might be in his kitchen eating dinner while his spectre or another embodiment of an evil spirit was out riding a broom. Accusers often reported that they had seen the spectre of the accused do witchcraft, and the court admitted this as evidence. Five additional cases came to trial on June 29, and there was no abatement in arrests.

The executions by hanging of Sarah Good, Sarah Wildes, Elizabeth How, Susanna Martin, and Rebecca Nurse took place on Gallows Hill on July 19. They were not buried decently but only dumped there in crevices in the rocks, their limbs protruding above ground. The trials continued throughout the summer. On August 19, the next executions occurred when the Reverend George Burroughs, John Proctor, George Jacobs, John Willard, and Martha Carrier were all hanged on Gallows Hill. By this time, many of Salem's citizens had begun to object boldly to the proceedings, and some area ministers were appalled at the conviction of the Reverend Burroughs. Just before the August 19 executions, word began to circulate that there would be an attempt to stop them.

On the day of the executions, the mood of citizens in attendance at Gallows Hill turned rebellious after they heard George Burroughs's eloquent defense of himself, but the attempt to halt the hangings was stopped by the Reverend Cotton Mather. Mather, a Boston minister who had written extensively on witchcraft, had become a close advisor to the Salem officials and strongly supported the trials. Upon hearing rumors that a mob might interfere with the executions on August 19, he galloped frantically from Boston to Salem, appearing on the scene just in time to intimidate the rebellious crowd members and send them cowering back to their acquiescent places. The court was stymied in its attempt to try old Giles Corey because he would not enter a plea. As he well knew, if his case went to court, his property could and would have been confiscated by the state; since he entered no plea neither guilty nor not guilty the state's hands were tied at first. So without benefit of trial, heavy stones were piled on Corey's body as a way of forcing him to enter a plea.

He refused and eventually was tortured to death on Sep- timber 19. Giles Corey's wife Martha was among the eight people hanged on September 22 the last of Salem's citizens to be executed for witchcraft. Still, however, people continued to be arrested and jailed on the charge. On October 3, Increase Mather for the first time publicly objected to what was transpiring in Salem, declaring that the evidence on which people were being found guilty was faulty. He declared that it was better for ten witches to go free than for one innocent person to be punished.

On October 12, Governor Phips officially called a halt to any further arrests. In the winter of 1692, those first accused had generally been paupers or mentally disturbed women who were easy targets. But as members of the privileged class began to be charged, public opinion began to turn against the courts and valuable support in high places was lost, as, for example, when the Reverend Hale's wife was charged. In May 1693, when Sir William Phips ordered all those who had been charged to be released, 150 persons jailed for witchcraft left the jails. It is estimated that the total number jailed was several hundred. In addition to the twenty who had been executed, at least two had died in jail Even many of those who were acquitted or released on order of Governor Phips were held in jail long after their names were cleared because each prisoner was required to repay the common wealth for food, board, travel to and from prison, jailer's fees, court fees, executioner's fees, and the paper on which any court business was conducted involving them.

They were even charged for their chains and handcuffs. Those who were poor when they were arrested languished in prison for as much as a year as friends and relatives made appeals for their release. Those who had some means were completely impoverished by their stay in jail. The irony is that the state had already seized at the time of their imprisonment property that the prisoners could have used to pay the debts to the state that they had incurred in prison.

Those who were fortunate enough to find sponsors to pay their bonds were in debt for years to those who had gotten them out of jail. Members of the general public, many of whom had been wary of the trials from the beginning, were openly critical of the judges, by the fall of 1692. Over the next four years, several of those involved in the trials expressed public remorse for what they had done as judges. Despite the Puritans' vigilance in rooting out witchcraft, God's wrath seemed to be stronger than ever, and ordinary people began to suspect that rather than being appeased by the Salem trials, God had been angered even more by what had happened. On December 17, 1696, a proclamation was issued written by Samuel Sewall, expressing the sentiments of most of the members of the government, asking God's help and forgiveness for anything they might have done wrong with regard to the trials and ordering a day of fasting and prayer. Over the years, the government issued small amounts of money in restitution to the families of those who had been executed or had had their property taken by the courts.

Those condemned remained under an official "taint" of dishonor until October 17, 1711, when the "several convictions Judgments and Attainder's" against the Salem "witches" were "reversed" and a total of 578 pounds and 12 shillings was paid to the families in compensation. Damages in the amount of 21 pounds were paid to the family of Giles Corey and his wife and 150 pounds to the family of John Proctor and his wife. Amazlflgly, as late as August 28, 1957, largely as a result of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible", a judicial resolution was passed that deplored the convictions of the condemned witches not covered in the 1711 river- sal, but failed to repeal them. The witch-hunts seem to have arisen more from the mental disturbance of one grown woman, Ann Putnam, and several adolescent girls under emotional stress. This was a group of girls just entering what for them especially was a time of terrifying physical and emotional awakening with little useful adult direction or support and a great deal of guilt and repression. On top of this, they had few approved emotional outlets; the issue of their dancing in the forest is a vivid case in point.

Metaphorically, they constituted a pressure cooker that finally exploded. To cover up what they believed was behavior for which they would be punished, they began to divert blame elsewhere. Almost immediately, they attracted attention and gained respect by accusing people of witchcraft. The most important citizens in the area hung on the girls' every word. The Reverend Cotton Mather and others sought them out for advice. Moreover, the girls found that they had the power to affect the lives of those who had had authority over them.

They literally had the power over life and death. Several instances including the invasion of John and Elizabeth Proctor's house and the taking of everything they owned. The sheriff and other officers "came and seized" the Jacobs family estate all they had. Those who escaped death by fleeing Salem, like the Edward Bishops and Philip English and his wife, also lost everything they had. The motive to take someone else's land was often coupled with a desire for vengeance. Documented feuds were behind many of the accusations, especially involving Thomas Putnam and his family and the Reverend Samuel Parris, all of whom seemed to control the accusations of the young girls.

Many of the warring factions seemed to involve Parris himself. One group had fought against the appointment of Parris as minister. Some in this group even refused to attend services at Parris's church after he was brought there. Thomas Putnam, one of the wealthiest men in the area, was Parris's chief supporter. Among Parris's most outspoken opponents, whom he thought responsible for his not receiving the pay he wanted, were the Proctors and the Nurses. They were also among the first to be accused.

All the human suffering was perpetrated in the name of religion fighting the Devil in a holy cause to cleanse the community of the worst manifestations of evil. But as many people knew even at the time, there were other, more persuasive reasons for the hysteria. Some of the impetus for the witch trials came from very basic human psychology. Many of the other compelling forces were less psychological and more crass, coming as they did from less mysterious forms of evil: plain human, greed, ambition, self-preservation, and revenge. They were taking advantage of an opportunity to take someone else's land, reputation and eventually his life by accusing him for of witchcraft.

Bibliography

Bender, David, et al., (ed.) Readings on The Crucible. United States of America: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1999.
Johnson, Claudia Durst and Johnson, Vernon E. Understanding The Crucible - A student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. United States of America: Greenwood Press, 1998.
Levin, David. What happened in Salem? United States of America: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1960.
Miller, Arthur. The Crucible. United States of America: Penguin Books, 1996.
Schlueter, June and Flanagan, James K., "The Historical Basis of The Crucible" in Bender, David et al. (ed.) Readings on The Crucible. Weisman, Richard. Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th-Century Massachusetts. United States of America: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.
Welland, Dennis. Arthur Miller - The Crucible. Singapore: Longman Singapore Publishers Pte Ltd, 1996.